The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1887-05-14
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agreed that they did not like him. Itwa'
very curious.
He was small, gray man, with nc
comeliness about him, and as lean as Q
volume Of. minor poetry. When on parade
with the other prisoners, he hitched up bis
left shoulder in manner that gave offence
to the deputy governor; and in his prison
clothes, which fitted him indifferently, he
looked as awkward as man who has just
been sentenced to be hanged. To be sure
he had an eye of very piercing quality
and habit of fixing it with disquieting
effect upon persons who addressed him
brusquely or with unnecessary harshness
and this power of the eye appears to have
been the chief cause of the offence which
the suaye and gentle convict had given to
the warders of the gaol.
For example, junior warder whom the
prisoner had summoned to his cell one
night, on some trivial occasion, told his
brother officers in the mess-room afterward
that there was Something in the look Of
No. 222" which he 'scouldn't make out
and couldn't stand" whereupon divers
other warders confessed to having felt a
similar influence in the presence of No. 222.
Strange, too, that his prisoners as
well as the warders made similar admis-
sions to one another touching the effect
which had been exercised on them by the eye
or the presence of No. 222. One said that
he felt cold; another that he felt "queer"
whenever No. 222 was near him; a third
that he had an itching sensation in his leg,
and fourth that he had the shivers down
the back.
More remarkable still were the expe-
riences recounted by the convict who had
sat on the left hand of No. 222 at meal
times. This man told his friends Gin
terms which would be Ineligible only to
readers who had s'served their time J that
he had been moved by an unaccountable
impulse to share his bread at dinner with
the neighbor On his right, though he
wanted the bread himself, and 'didn't like
the look Of his neighbor's eye. For a
whole week he resisted the impulse, and
then succumbed, passing half his bread
over to No. 222, who took it and thanked
him AID ate it.
By and by like story was told by the
prisoner, whose place during meals was at
the right hand of No. 222. An impulse
seized him at dinner TO share his mutton
with the man on his left, and he obeyed it,
though he could not say why, for he never
got as much mutton as he wanted, and he
hated the eye of No. 222.
No. 222 was man named John Nc
Gibbon, who had passed into prison as the
result of an ingenious but unsuccessful
attempt to pay old debts in new way.
Being of genuine philosophic tempera-
ment, he bowed resignedly to the ineyita-
Bile, and made himself as comfortable as he
could. Amongst his relaxations were the
occasional visits of the chaplain, fat and
pleasant man, who would listen with an
air of surprise while the prisoner told him
many strange tricks in cards. and the
profits that might proceed from the skill
full manipulation of double pack. Not
infrequently the chaplain dissented from
the prisoners views on card-playing, and
on these occasions No. 222 would reply
that when he alluded to the concealment
of aces in the sleeve of an experienced
player he did not suggest that his hearer
should resort to such practices. His OBJ
jeet was merely to expound the possibili-
ties of an art Of which he desired that the
chaplain should never become the victim.
"Knowledge, even of this peculiar kind, "
he said, "may be of service, sir, to the best
of us in circumstances which can never be
foretold." Sometimes the chaplain was
supposed to get up and so while one of
these discourses was in progress, but as
often as he attempted this glance from
the prisoners eye drew him to his seat
again, and he was powerless to move until
he felt that the prisoner by his own will
released him. Thus the chaplain was also
drawn within the influence of that mystic
rious eye.
Extraordinary things began to happen
in the prison, and it became evident that
the internal order of that establishment was
less strictly kept than before. This made
for the comfort of the prisoners and for
the discomfort of the officers
More than once the warder, whose duty
it was to ring the bell for rising, was half
an hour late at his post. The prisoners
slept agreeably during that half hour, but
very bad quarter of an hour was subse-
quently experienced by the neglectful
warder.
The chaplain had a well-meant but
tedious habit of expanding his Sunday SER
mon; all at once he became very pleasantly
brief, vet it seemed that his breyity was
quite involuntary, for he would stop short
and pronounce benediction in the very mid
die of an argument.
Curious things happened to warders who
had made themselves unpopular among the
prisoners. They went to sleep quite early
in the afternoon while presiding over a
gang in the workshop; they forgot how to
count their men on parade; they shouldered
their rifles upside down; they made point
less jokes in the presence of the deputy
governor, which he greatly disliked; they
carried prisoners for punishment before the
governor, and did not remember what they
had charged them with.
CtFeral OI tne WdIutIn idlu thcil hCauS
together in the mess-room, and said they
believed No. 222 was the source of all this
mischief They agreed thereupon that the
life Of this prisoner must be made burden
to him, that he might cease to exercise his
diabolical powers to the injury of the
warders.
Now, in this prison they had favorite,
foolish way of annoying the prisoners by
ordering them down stairs to have their
hair cut. 1t was a form of persecution
which no one resented more than No. 222,
whose hair had been in happier days his
chief personal vanity. His intense dislike
to come under the shears of the prison bar
ber (who always made what he called a
asmooth job" of his victims head was
known to an assistant warder, who laid his
plans accordingly, and having his gang
about him in the tailor's room on the after
noon following the discussion in the mess
room, he presently called out:
1922, take, yer stool and go down stairs
and have yer air cut"
The hand of No. 222 went instantly to
his head, and felt it all over in slow care
full manner. There was not one particular